Oz standing up for 'bigoted white males'

A Greens senator has launched a blistering attack on The Australian newspaper accusing it of assassinating the character of a prominent Muslim activist and standing up for privileged middle-aged white blokes espousing bigoted views.

The News Corp publication has revealed Yassmin Abdel-Magied took a taxpayer-funded tour to some of the world's most repressive Islamic regimes last November, promoting her book about being a Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian Muslim woman who wears the hijab.

"It's a straight, simple character assassination by The Australian, as they always do when someone dares raise their head above the parapet and make comments with which they disagree," Senator Nick McKim told parliament on Thursday.

"It is a disgusting, race-baiting rant."

Ms Abdel-Magied had a heated clash with Jacqui Lambie on ABC-TV's Q&A program on Monday after the independent senator argued those countries where sharia informs the law were some of the most violently misogynistic places on earth.

Senator McKim's comments came during debate on a One Nation bill that seeks to change the way the Australian Human Rights Commission handles complaints.

"It extends protections of the law to innocent respondents who currently are at risk of being dragged before the commission to answer spurious allegations and malicious attempts at character assassination."

Liberal senator David Fawcett thanked The Australian for its coverage of racial discrimination cases, including defending its cartoonist Bill Leak against a complaint and highlighting the plight of three Queensland University of Technology students.

Labor's Lisa Singh dismissed the bill as a thinly-veiled attack on the commission.

"There is no other reason why One Nation has brought this about other than to put forward their ongoing political agenda, which seems to be nothing more than a racist rant," she said.